Usually, the older people are, the younger their children are. And when our parents get older, they can end up depending on us again. This time, though, they tend to become the children, and we become the parents. It can be challenging and sometimes even delightful. It demands a delicate balance of feelings, common sense, patience, goodwill, and tough practicalities. Home care for aging parents is often the preferred option for families because it keeps loved ones in the most comfortable and familiar surroundings and comes with a personal touch. Here, we’ll share everything we know about caring for aging parents at home, including emotional support, practicalities, and security.
1. Understanding the Emotional Impact
Caring for parents in later life can be a very emotionally fraught time. You might feel sadness at the sight of your parents changing and becoming more dependent, fear about what lies ahead, and even guilt that you might not be doing enough for them. Thinking through these feelings and sharing them with someone – a family member, friend, or counselor – is important. You are not alone. It’s nothing to feel bad about. Reach out.
2. Assessing Your Parent’s Needs
Is your parent mobile? Can you assist with daily personal hygiene functions, such as dressing or bathing? Does she need trips to the doctor? Partial or round-the-clock nursing? To start, it’s important to identify what your parent needs. As you’ll see, those needs can be broadly defined. From basics such as daily personal hygiene (so-called activities of daily living or ADLs) to medical attention (instrumental activities of daily living or IADLS), there’s a lot to consider. Here are the steps, starting at the beginning.
- Physical needs: Determine whether your parent needs help accessing the bathroom, managing medicine, or getting dressed. Do they require help eating, bathing, or using the restroom?
- Emotional and Psychological Needs: Does your parent exhibit signs of loneliness, sadness, or anxiety? How happy do they seem in general and with life? It is just as important to take care of your parents’ emotional well-being as it is to their physical health.
- Cognitive Needs: How is your parent’s cognition? Does your parent seem to be losing his memory or occasionally confused about what shows are on television or which day it is each week? This might affect the level of care they need.
- Social Needs: Think about their social life The things that they’ll miss out on: ‘Do they have a chance to meet up with friends, join the community, continue with a hobby, etc?’
3. Creating a Safe Home Environment
Providing care for aging parents in their homes is not always as much fun as some great poets and writers would have you believe. While carers can find great meaning in taking care of their parents, the actual tasks involved in keeping them safe, warm, and thriving can be quite challenging. Safety is a major concern, for example, as mobility declines and the risk of falls increases. The home environment should be made as safe and comfortable as possible. Some good suggestions are described below.
- Eliminate tripping hazards: Remove clutter that gets in the way, secure all loose rugs, and make sure the bedroom, stairways, and bathrooms have proper lighting. Install grab bars in the bathroom and on stairways.
- Modify the Home: Add ramps, widen a doorway, or install a stairlift.
- Emergency Preparedness: Make sure the phone is easy for your parent to access, as well as any emergency alert device that the parent is given. Make sure you keep a list of emergency contacts handy.
- Medication Safety: organize medications so your parent doesn’t mix up one pill with another (e.g. morning tablets/vitamins with evening ones). Store them in pill organizers or automatic dispensers. If your parent has any cognitive impairment, consider locking the medicine cabinet as well.
4. Developing a Care Plan
- Establish a Care Plan: There are many facets to caring for parents – daily routines, medical care, dietary needs, and personal preferences and dislikes. Determining what you need to accomplish daily for your parent will help you plan actionable next steps to improve your parent’s life. Here’s how you can create an actionable Care Plan.
- Daily routines: When feasible, maintain a robust daily routine containing meals, medication times, exercise, and other social or environmental activities to create the structure and predictability that living with dementia requires.
- Medical Care: Follow up with your parent’s physicians and be sure they’re meeting and treating their medical needs. Make sure you know what appointments they’re scheduled for, what medications they’re taking, and if there are specific treatments your parent needs.
- Dietary: Does your parent have the proper nutrition? Perhaps special meals? Does fluid intake need monitoring? Does your parent need to see a dietitian?
- Mental and Emotional Well-being: Puzzles, reading, and just good, targeted time together can help adults maintain mental and emotional vitality.
- Plan For Respite Care: Don’t forget to plan for yourself – as a caregiver, don’t forget to arrange for respite care so that you can take time out.
5. Managing Finances and Legal Matters
Adult children often find it difficult to initiate conversations about their parents’ financial and legal affairs, but it can be even worse to let things slide until a point when it’s too late. Questions you might have to grapple with include:
- Power of attorney: It’s best to set up a power of attorney (POA) for your parent. It can help them with financial and medical decisions when they can’t take care of it.
- Estate Planning: If your parent has a will, check that it is still current and that it reflects your parent’s desire for the distribution of assets. If not, help them to draft one.
- Budget for Care: Calculate anticipated costs for in-home medical care, home modifications to accommodate the parent’s needs, and whether in-home caretakers will need to be hired. Balance these expenses while ensuring the parent’s continued financial security.
- Insurance: Look at the policies your parent has. Not all things are covered by health, long-term care, or life insurance policies. Ask about other coverage your parent may need.
- Benefits and Assistance Programs: Research and apply for programs that will assist with the cost of care, such as Medicaid, veteran benefits, grants, or other local senior assistance programs.
6. Balancing Caregiving with Other Responsibilities
Whether they’re a sandwich generation drowning in daily care duties or are simply trying to add a few more minutes to a mother’s day while navigating their career responsibilities and family obligations, the perils of burnout are not far off for many family caregivers. Keeping balance is key. Here are some tips.
- Managing your time, prioritizing your requirements, tailoring those requirements into a schedule that allows for completion (use calendars, apps, and planners in your possession), and spreading your workload over time.
- Delegating Tasks: Don’t be afraid to ask your family members, friends, or professional carers for aid. Delegating tasks might prevent you from getting overwhelmed by the care of your loved one.
- Self-Care: Make sure you set aside time for relaxation, exercise, and savoring the things you like to do. The more you can look after yourself, the better you will be able to handle your illness.
- Support Systems: Join an in-person or online caregiver support group. Having the chance to talk with others who also care for a loved one with dementia can be a lifesaver.
- At Work: If you work, talk to your employer about your caregiving responsibilities. Many employers allow flexible hours, working from home, or family leave to caregivers.
7. Recognizing When It’s Time for Additional Help
Sometimes we realize that, as their needs evolve, the home is no longer suitable, and they might need a higher level of care. Here are some clues that you might decide it is time to look for more support:
- Escalating care demands: if your parent’s physical or mental state declines to the point that he or she needs full-time care that you aren’t capable of providing alone, you might need to call in hired help.
- When your physical, emotional, or even mental reserves start to feel depleted, it may be that you just need some support to take care of yourself. For some, a caring role can involve physical challenges; for others, it is more on the emotional or spiritual levels.
- Safety Issues: If your parent’s safety is endangered by falling, wandering, or other hazards that cannot be mitigated at home, professional care such as an assisted living residence or a nursing home is likely required.
- Medical Consultation: Contact your parent’s doctors If their Doctor advisesthat your parent should have around-the-clock care, review your ability to continue caring for your parent at home.
8. Exploring Home Care Services
Home care services offer a helping hand to sons and daughters who are stretched to the limit in caring for an aging parent. If you are struggling with your tempestuous family life, now might be the right time to consider home care services. The objective of home care is to afford the elderly the highest quality of life possible and ease the burden on sons and daughters who gladly accept the task. Here’s what you should look for in a home care service.
Types of Home Care Services:
Personal Care Aides: Help with daily activities such as bathing, dressing, and meal preparation.
Home Health Aides: Provide healthcare tasks (giving medications, monitoring vital signs, etc) under the direction of a healthcare professional.
- Companion Care: Focuses on providing social interaction, emotional support, and assistance with errands.
- Respite Care: Temporary relief for primary caregivers, allowing them to take breaks.
- Finding a Home Care Agency for Your Parents: You can begin conducting your research for selecting home care agencies by evaluating which ones are a great match with your parents’ needs. Check their licensing credentials, speak to other families that have used the same agency, visit the official website, and see what client testimonials they have posted there.
- Hiring private carers: Get written references and check them. Get a police check and look at qualifications. Be clear with any private carer about your expectations and what will be done.
- Costs: Find out what care costs are, discover financing options, and learn about what your insurance may cover. Payment: Review payment options including insurance, government programs, and out-of-pocket spending.
9. Navigating the Challenges of Dementia Care
Parents with dementia may exhibit challenging behavior as they grapple with the loss of memory and language, their reaction to which can be frustrating for those closest to them. Families discover ways to adapt. Caregivers for dementia encourage a calm attitude, using ‘redirection’ (drawing the parent’s attention away from the triggering behavior) and ‘reality orientation’ (reminding elderly family members of basic biographical details and the current time and place to minimize confusion). For those who care for parents with dementia, here are a few strategies to help.
- Do: Keep your communications simple, concrete, and directed; speak slowly and clearly; make eye contact; be patient and give your parent more time to process what you’ve said.
- Routine and Structure: Do what you can to provide structure to the day and create a routine. If a person’s routine is the same every day, this can help reduce confusion and anxiety. Familiarity helps in building comforting and productive routines.
- Deal with Behavioural Changes: Understand that behavioral changes are part of the disease; you are not hurting their ego by mentioning things that they don’t remember or that never happened. Avoid arguments by giving a calm response. Redirection and reassurance often diffuse a difficult situation.
- SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS The following changes are necessary to ensure safety: There should be no risk of your parent wandering off. Be sure to lock the doors, set alarms, and monitor your parent.
- Support for Caregivers: Dementia care may take an emotional toll. Connect with dementia care specialists, support groups, and respite care services.
10. Planning for the Future
Planning for your parent’s future care as they get older is an essential step in preparing yourself and your parent for the road ahead. Creating a clear vision of what each of you wants will help provide for care needs over the long term. It involves talking about deep, end-of-life concerns, providing care options, and sorting out finances and legal issues. The steps include:
- Advance directive You and your mum should discuss what she wants for care in the event she can’t speak for herself. If anything is unclear, consider drafting a directive, commonly known as a living will or do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order.
- Long-Term Care Planning: Assist your parent with researching and evaluating options, and then decide what type of long-term care plan is best for them: assisted living, nursing home, in-home care, or a combination of these.
- Financial: Set up either a reverse mortgage or a pooled income account to manage your parent’s ‘nest egg’, and to help pay for care in the long-term. Sit down with a financial planner. Managing all these different considerations can be challenging enough without trying to sort through them with a loved one who is experiencing cognitive impairment. Don’t be swayed by the fear of being pressured into breaking the state budget.
- Family support: Engage other family members in the planning process to get them all on the same page and have an easier time sharing the responsibility.
- Regular review: Check your parent’s plan of care, including living wills, power of attorney, advanced directives, and financial documents every few months to ensure they’re up to date and reflect her condition and wishes.
What legal documents should I have in place for my aging parent’s care?
When caring for aging parents, you need a legal arsenal to make sure their wishes are honored and their needs met. Here’s a checklist that should get you started:
1. Advance Directives
Advance directives help spell out your parent’s wishes for medical care should they no longer be able to express them – the so-called ‘thing’ category includes:
Living Will: States the kinds of end‐of‐life medical care your parents wish to receive or avoid, like resuscitation or life‐sustaining measures.
Healthcare Power of Attorney: Appoint a representative to make medical decisions for you if you become incapacitated.
2. Durable Power of Attorney (DPOA)
A Durable Power of Attorney authorizes your parent to name someone to serve as their power of attorney to manage financial matters in the event they are unable to make or communicate such decisions.
3. Last will
A last will is a document that tells who should receive your parent’s assets upon death. It declares an executor who will carry out your parents’ estate and helps to prevent a feud among family members about who should get what.
4. Revocable Living Trust
A Revocable Living Trust converts your parent’s assets into a trust during their lifetime, potentially avoiding probate after their death while allowing them to retain control over assets.
5. HIPAA Authorization
A HIPAA authorization would allow healthcare providers to reveal your parent’s medical information to named individuals, such as family members or caregivers, so that they can have the information they need to help care for your parent.
6. Long-Term Care Insurance Policy
Although not a legal document, a Long-Term Care Insurance Policy can help offset the expenses associated with long-term services and support, whether in-home or in an assisted-living facility. This accomplishes the third component of a person’s financial plan.
7. Financial Documents
In addition to the above, I keep a running list of all sorts of financial documents such as:
- Bank account information
- Tax returns
- Property deeds
- Insurance policies
- Investment accounts
Without these documents, managing your parent’s financial affairs could become burdensome, if not impossible, and your parent’s needs might not be met.
8. Miscellaneous Documents
Other important documents to consider include:
- Marriage and divorce certificates
- Military records (if applicable)
- Birth certificates
- Social Security cards
- Driver’s licenses
Taking care of your parents at home is one of the most important things you can ever do, but it’s also a complex job that requires hard work, empathy, and flexibility. If you can attend to their needs, create a safe home environment, and know when it’s time to ask for help, you can offer your parents dignity and independence in their later years. You don’t have to do it alone. Connect with your support team – family, friends, or paid help – to make sure you can handle this transition with grace and that you and your parents can make this time in life a positive experience for the whole family.
